Friday 14 December 2012

How to compare MOOC vendors

MOOC become very popular. For last year we talked about Coursera, Udacity and edX. But new MOOC provider continue to appear. It is the trend.

On the web appear many blog or forum posts like "Udacity vs Coursera", "Udacity vs edX" etc.

I want to find some standard way to compare MOOC vendors. It would be good to have the list of factors and evaluate a MOOC provider with them.

I researched posts Coursera vs UdacityUdacity and Coursera Comparison, Coursera vs UdacityKhan vs Udacity vs Coursera and other.

I selected following factors to compare MOOC providers.

Content.
Interactive videos. Videos mixed with quizzes, following explanation of a quiz in a video.
Video lectures. Video recorded lectures of "traditional style"
Text readings. Lectures or books to read.
Different multimedia. PPT presentations, image galleries etc.
Deadlines. Course lectures and other materials are accessible in limited period of time.

Subjects.
Covered variety of subjects. A vendor offers courses on different subjects or only one subject (for example, computer science)

Interaction. How instructors interact with students and check their progress.
Quizzes. 
Home work.
Course project.

Community and student collaboration.
Discussion forums.
Local groups support. MOOC vendor allows to find other students in local area to learn a course together
Group projects.
Instructors monitor community.

Instructors. Who are courses instructors.
Famous  professors from top universities.
Famous people in their professions.

Universities and Colleges.
Partnership with Universities and Colleges.
College credits. Some courses can be used to get credit in college


Cost.
Course Cost. Many courses are free. But there are also paid with cost starting from $5.
Certification cost. MOOC students would like to get a certificate of course completion . Some MOOC vendors do final exam and issue a certificate. And sometimes the exam is paid (while a course is free).

Update 1.
I got some comments from community about more factors to add.

Certification.
Course completion certificates.
Certification after course.
Partnership with independed certification companies.

Company.
Commercial or Non Profit company.
Funding sources.
Organization type (organizations/enterprises/corporations).

I think this is not full list of factors. Post your comments if you want to add something to the list.




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